


five conversations about (im)mortality

by cordsycords



Category: L.A. By Night (Web Series)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Meeting the Family, So I'll Do It Myself, This Fandom Has Barely Any Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-06
Updated: 2019-06-06
Packaged: 2020-04-11 12:18:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,559
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19109509
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cordsycords/pseuds/cordsycords
Summary: Chloe meets the coterie of the valley.(Written before the Season 3 premiere)





	five conversations about (im)mortality

**Author's Note:**

> Wow, this is like the first time I'm posting in a long time. For anyone who has come over here from my Critical Role fics, PLEASE WATCH LA BY NIGHT IS IT SO GOOD.

i. eva

It’s hard for Chloe to believe that Eva is the kind of monster that she had described herself as when they first met. Small, thin, clad in clothes as pale and white as her skin, she looks more china doll than monster. She glides wherever she goes, light and graceful with each and every step like a ballerina tip-toeing across a stage. The place she calls her haven is equally dichotomous, the old park ranger hut is filled with plants and flowers that appear healthy and well-attended to. It’s not a place a monster lives, dark and decrepit due to necessity rather than choice, and if Chloe didn’t know any better she’d assume Eva was just a regular human with a love of nature and strange sleeping habits.

There is also a room where she is _definitely not allowed to go inside_ which piques her interest more than it should. It takes everything she is to stay away, she’s a guest in this place she tells herself, she shouldn’t go snooping.

As for her host, Eva rarely makes an appearance in the first week of Chloe’s residency. She assumes that Eva must wake up before her, her new internal clock gets her up right after sunsets and every time she wakes there is a small glass vial of blood sitting at her bedside, accompanied by a dried daffodil and a scrawled note on parchment. Eva’s writing loops and curves across the page, perfect from letter to letter. Each night she’s away she warns Chloe not to leave, gives her some tasks to finish for the night, and assures that they’ll talk soon.

She’s never been good at waiting, but she knows she must remain patient. So she tends to Eva’s garden, picks whatever herbs or flowers she asks for, grinds them into pastes and sets them outside to soak in the moonlight. She’s allowed to look through the books in Eva’s meagre library, though half of them are in languages she can’t read, and the other half are on subjects that are of no interest to her. Vampire history books are sorely lacking, apparently, compared to the texts that Eva has on ecology and biology, sprinkled with tomes on magickal (yes, spelled with a _k_ ) theories and rituals that sound more Harry Potter than real life. When she’s done whatever Eva asks her to do for the night, she reads, absorbs as much as she can, before Eva comes home right before sunrise. She always has food with her, but other than a cursory hello and a how was your day, she quickly holes herself up in the room that shall-not-be-entered.

She spends eleven nights thinking she walks on eggshells. Eva is hard to read at best, polite and level-headed to a fault. Chloe feels like she should be at ease here by now, but every time Eva opens her mouth she can see the hint of her pointed canines, and an uneasy shudder splits down her spine. 

On the twelfth night, she wakes up to her customary vial of blood, drinking it down with one gulp before she licks each extra drop from her lips. She sorts through a pile of clothes that had surreptitiously shown up a few days, all in her size, for something fresh to wear. There’s a soft black hoodie that makes her smile so she pulls it on over her bra, feeling the softness of the fabric against her skin, and zips it up to her neck.

When she walks out into the main room of the cabin, Eva is there in her bright white apparel, carefully cutting the flowers of a hibiscus plant. There’s a small fire in the cabin’s fireplace warming a kettle, which is surprising, to say the least, but it makes the cabin feel welcoming and homey.

“Ah, Chloe,” Eva says as she notices her, “You’re awake. Good.”

“Hi Eva,” she replies, “It’s been a while.”

She nods, “I’m aware. Things have been… difficult recently. I’ve been… dealing with it. Sit, please. There’s tea in the kettle.”

She sits down on one of the moth-eaten chairs in front of the fire, carefully taking the kettle off to pour the tea into one of two china teacups. Taking a sip, the tea tastes sweet as it warms her from the inside. She drinks it as she watches Eva continue to prune her plants, flitting across the wooden cabin floor with grace.

Chloe pours another cup before Eva sits down opposite her and pours a cup of her own. Chloe wonders what the point of that is before something changes in Eva. Her supernatural stillness is all of the sudden interrupted by a single haggard breath that escapes her lips, and a faint pinkish hue colours her cheeks. She carefully takes a sip of her tea and sighs at the taste.

“You can eat?” Chloe asks.

“Yes, it takes a certain amount of will to keep it down, however.”

“Fi couldn’t even stomach the smell.”

Eva winces at the mention of her, “Fiona, while a good representation of most Kindred, does not resemble all of us. Those of us who… who _choose_ to be better, are rewarded with small gifts of our humanity.”

“So, not many of you can do that?”

“No, it took years for me to even stomach the taste.” She takes another sip of her tea, clearly uncomfortable with revealing such information about herself.

“How old are you, Eva?” Chloe asks her instinct to keep asking questions regardless of another person’s comfort kicking in. Eva visibly flinches at the question, the glare in her eye piercing straight through Chloe’s confidence. She looks away, taking a sip of her tea that doesn’t exist.

“When can I leave,” she murmurs into her cup, keeping her eyes away from Eva’s glare, her real question hidden beneath her words.

“I’ve been looking into that. Jasper and his coterie, and myself by proxy, have found ourselves in the middle of something that’s grown far out of our control. A group, sect if you will, of very powerful Kindred have set their sights on Los Angeles, some of them have found particular… interest in Jasper specifically. Others have… they are dangerous in their own way, and even more so for me.”

“And that means I’m in danger too.”

“Indeed.”

Chloe slumps in her chair, her hands limply holding the teacup on her thigh, “So I have to stay here? Until everything just gets fixed?”

“I do not want to keep you here, Chloe.”

“I don’t know, I think I make a pretty good assistant.”

Eva snarls into her teacup. Chloe flinches at the sound, every muscle going taught as the vampire blood in her body is yelling at her to fight, she tampers it down, but her hands are shaking.

Eva puts down her tea, “I apologize. I’m very on edge as of late.” Now it’s her turn to look away. Her hands smooth at her skirt as she tries to continue.

Chloe takes an extra second to calm down, “I guess you have as much as an idea of how to go about this as I do.”

Eva nods, “I do not want to keep you here,” she repeated herself, “Trust me, I know more than most this feeling of imprisonment. It’s not until very recently that I was allowed to do what I wished and I’m rather against inflicting that feeling on anyone, Kindred or mortal.”

“You’ve been put in a bad position.”

“Yes.”

“By Jasper.”

“Indeed.”

“I’m sorry.”

Eva sighs, “Jasper was already indebted to me for previous favours. Those debts have simply been increased.”

“And now there are two people that you’re preventing from doing what they want.”

“Hmm,” Eva hums in agreement, “This has never been what _I_ wanted.”

“What do you want?”

“I want to be left alone. By the Anarchs, the Camarilla, the Pyramid. I want to stay here, in my little cabin in the woods and tend to my flowers and watch the stars at night. I want to be forgotten, along with the knowledge that I hold, so that I won’t be a danger anymore.”

Eva turns her head to look out the window, into the darkness of the surrounding forest, her expression both lost and forlorn. The dim light of the fire flickers against her pale skin. No, Chloe can’t think of her as a monster. She can’t see her drinking a person’s blood, or controlling the world behind a smokescreen of power, or even indebting those around her into her service. She sees a woman in mourning, lost in her grief over the humanity she once lost, longing to go back to when the world was simple and naive.

To some degree, Chloe can relate.

 

ii. victor

It is very hard to believe that Victor Temple is a vampire. Jasper and Eva and Fiona all stayed behind the scenes of society, pulling strings to get their way but never making an appearance. But Victor is present, in every sense of the word. She’s walked past his building on campus, she’s watched his livestreams against her wishes, she’s been at parties where every single song on the playlist is a Temple of Boom production. She even, however tangentially, knows his son. 

It takes another week before Eva allows her out of the cabin, and even then it is under the disguise of darkness and misdirection. Walking through the woods until she comes out onto a service road, waiting there until a black SUV with darkened windows to pulls up beside her. Some romantic side of her half-expects Jasper to be inside there to whisk her away, but instead, she opens the back door to reveal a suit in sunglasses hiding a blank stare at the wheel. He greets her by name and spirits her away across Los Angeles.

It takes her a minute to realize he’s taking her into the Valley, through streets of studios until they come up on a large building still under construction. The SUV goes through the security gates without a problem and pulls up to the back. The man driving gets out of the car and opens her door, motioning for her to get out.

“Thanks,” she mumbles, shouldering past him on her way out. He leads her through the back door and up several flights of stairs to the top floor, through a maze of hallways lined with platinum records and awards until they finally come to a dead and with a single door. She looks to the suit, who nods, and lets herself in.

“Chloe Hudson,” she's greeted by a man, basketball-player height in a well-tailored suit, “Twenty-six years old, hailing from Arkansas, dropout at UCLA, now majoring in Investigative Journalism at Griffith College,” his back is turned to her, carefully arranging a variety of trophies, plaques, and records on a grand bookcase behind an equally grand desk. He sounds like a villain from a cliche paperback spy novel, trying to intimidate her with all the information he could get through a simple search of the Griffith student directory.

She relaxes her shoulder, putting her hands in the pockets of her hoodie, “Are you trying to intimidate me, Mr. Temple?” She asks, acting as naive as possible.

Victor Temple turns to face her, an award-winning smile plastered on his face. His canines aren't as sharp as Fiona's, she notices, but the smile is very much faked, going by the way his eyes glare at her.

“You don't seem like a girl who can be intimidated, Miss. Hudson.”

She shrugs, “As you said, I'm a journalist. I take great pleasure in being able to look power in the eye and say fuck you.”

He laughs. It echoes throughout the room, loud and booming. She jumps a bit where she stands.

“Miss. Hudson, Chloe, can I call you Chloe? Sit, please, I just want to talk,” he says, coming out from behind his desk to the seating area that takes up the rest of the office. He takes the couch on the left, she goes to the right, keeping her eyes on him. Feeling like a delinquent about to get a talking to from her juvie officer, she slouches back into the cushions. They’re not comfortable.

Bending forward to place his elbows on his knees, Victor Temple places his forehead in his hands and sighs before he begins to speak. He looks tired for an immortal, monstrous killing-machine, hanging his head like the weight of the world is on his shoulders, “You, Chloe, are a problem.” He states, matter-of-factly, “A problem that I, honestly, have no idea how to fix.”

“People have been saying that a lot, recently.”

He chuckles, “It’s true. It’s very true. You see, this? This is a mess. This is a mess on top of a dumpster on top of a cesspool of shit. And there is nothing that I can do about it. I have other shit to worry about, Chloe, shit that’s way more important than Jasper’s little girlfriend.”

He spits the last word out, and she finds herself confused by the term. She wouldn’t call herself his girlfriend, not anymore at least. Yet she wouldn’t consider them completely broken up, either. There hadn’t been time to have a conversation about that yet.

“I think I’ve already stated my opinion on this whole ordeal. If you would just turn me, all this mess _could_ just disappear.”

“But that’s not gonna happen,” Victor shakes his head

“Oh, phooey,” she replies, snapping her fingers as she rests her head on the back of the couch, “What’s your excuse? You a monster too?”

He pauses to think, “I like to think I try hard not to be, though that’s certainly up to interpretation. Personally, when it comes to our condition, I like to think we are everything that mortals can be, the good and the bad, just dialled up to eleven. I know that Embracing you is the easiest way to end this clusterfuck, but here’s the thing: your boy-toy in black? He will literally kill me if I even lay a finger on you. And I like being alive.”

“So we’re back at the beginning.”

“Unfortunately.”

They sit in silence. She pulls her legs up onto the couch, uncaring of whether her shows will scuff up the leather, bringing her knees up to wrap her arms around them, “When can I see Jasper?”

“That’s a very difficult question to answer,” he replies plainly.

“So what am I doing here, Victor?”

Getting up from the couch, he crosses the room, “First thing you should know about Kindred, our society doesn’t run on money, that doesn’t really matter much when you can live forever. No, we run on the power of the deal and Ventrue, such as yours truly, are the best dealmakers of the lot.” He picks up a cardboard box and places it in front of her gesturing its contents. Glancing inside she sees a new phone, probably untraceable, placed on top of a laptop still wrapped in its plastic, likely the same.

“Keep laying low. This mess is going to blow over sooner or later, and whether we come out on top or otherwise you’ll have a lot less to worry about when it’s all over. Until then, I’ll see what I can do to… sway Jasper to our side of things. Though I can’t guarantee he’ll listen.”

“And what do you want from me?”

He smirks, leaning toward her, “Fast learner. Fiona updated me on much of the situation, I understand you were doing some research for her. I just want you to continue that research, and update me on anything that you find interesting. You may be cooped up, away from the action, but you can still help me. You can still help Jasper.”

Chloe is not naive enough to believe that Victor is doing this for anyone else but himself. But there’s some sincerity there, under the suit and expensive gifts, that she trusts, somehow. She reaches out her hand, “You have a deal, Victor.”

She’s on her way back to the park twenty minutes later, her box of gifts on the seat next to her. Picking up the phone, she unlocks it and goes searching through the preloaded contacts, seeing three more than she expected.

_Baby-B_

_Boy-Toy in Black_

_Maharaja_

_Maharahni_

 

iii. nelli

Even in undeath, Jasper Heartwood still continues to be a shitty texter. She texts him a few times over the next couple days and gets no response in return, which she honestly should have predicted considering their history. She has half a mind to call him but is sure he wouldn't answer that either. So she resigns herself to her research, exercising her craft all the while pretending she's not going to look at her phone every fifteen minutes.

It feels good to be working again, she can put all her worries away when she has a lead to follow or a story to uncover. Nothing else matters when there's an unanswered question staring at her in the face. She uploads anything she finds to a private server, and every once in awhile she receives something in return. Victor feeds her information on Kindred society, as much that's written down anyways. She devours it, leaving herself wanting more each and every time.

It takes another eight days to receive her first text. The loud vibration from her phone spooks her enough that she jumps in place, knocking it to the floor. When she finally opens it up, she excitedly looks at the screen but is only met with disappointment.

[Maharani 23:21]

Up for some midnite madness?

[BLOCKED 23:21]

Who is this?

[Maharani 23:22]

👸of the coterie and your entertainment for the night. Be there or be boring, darling.

The next text is a set of coordinates on the outskirts of the park, a twenty minute walk at least. She yells to Eva that she's going Out and gets a muffled reply in return. She pulls the black hoodie on and walks out into the night.

The cabin itself is a long-forgotten part of the park’s past. The old service road that leads up to it is now lost to time, coupled with a two dozen Kindred blood wards protect it from any outside influences, from mortal to vamp. Chloe herself has a couple of protective wards on her courtesy of Eva who claims that one can never be too careful. There’s a pendant around her neck, a ring on her left pinkie finger, and apparently, her entire collection of socks had gone through a ritual to protect against ghostly possession. 

When she gets to where she needs to be, it’s to find that whoever is picking her up is already there. A short, black limo sits at the side of the road. A man in a black dress shirt and tie leaning up against the door smoking a cigarette. She makes no noise as she approaches but he still flinches to look at her when she draws near, dropping the cigarette on the ground and stamping on it with the heel of his black dress shoe.

“Chloe,” he greets familiarly.

“Do I know you?”

He clears his throat, “Uh, no. Not really. I- I got you out.”

“Oh.”

He looks her up and down, nods to himself, then opens the car door behind him, “Nelli Griffith for you, ma'am.

Nothing surprises her anymore. Of course, her best friend's fashion prof is a fucking vampire. She ducks into the limo, sliding onto the bench as the door is closed behind her. When she looks up its to see the elusive Nelli G, patent red beret perched jauntily on her head, lounging on the limo bench holding a champagne flute of what is decidedly _not_ champagne. Another woman, dark-skinned, hair done up in braids, sits next to her, sipping on some actual champagne.

“Ah, the woman of the hour,” Nelli greets, “Chelsea, Chloe, Chloe, Chelsea.”

“We've met,” Chelsea says, “Though you look better now.”

She doesn't know how to respond to that.

“Where to next, ma'am?” The driver asks from up front.

“Hollywood Cemetery, Daffodil, we still have one more to pick up,” Nelli replies without taking her eyes off of Chloe.

“What is this all about, Miss. Griffith?” Chloe asks.

Nelli just laughs her tiny body curling over herself. Chelsea laughs too, a tiny chuckle under her breath, “Please, darling, it's just Nelli to you. Miss. Griffith was my mother. As for why I'm here, well I'm doing you a favour, darling. The black hoodie is very cute, very princess in the tower waiting for her prince to return, but you could do so much better.”

“So you're taking me shopping?” Chloe asks, incredulous.

“Never underestimate the power of retail therapy, darling,” Nelli reaches into the limo's mini-bar, grabbing a flute and an opened bottle of champagne, “They're letting you waste away, keeping you all cooped up like that. I'm here to turn that frown upside down, and perhaps answer some questions.” She pours the champagne, then hands the flute over to Chloe.

“What kind of questions?”

“Any of them, darling, I'm an open book. And don't worry about Chelsea and Greg, they won't tell a soul, dead or alive.”

She has many of those, though she can't tell how truthful Nelli is being. All eyes are on her, even Greg is looking at her through the rearview mirror. She starts with a simple one, “What's the coterie?”

She puts up a finger, “Victor, the King,” then another, “Yours truly, the Queen,” a third, “Jasper, the Assassin,” and finally her pinkie,” and Annabelle, the Revolutionary. We’re an odd little bunch to be quite frank, you don't see many Kindred work so well together without something other than loyalty binding them.”

“Like what?”

“Fear, deals, sometimes just plain old Vitae if you want. We Kindred are difficult to trust, for obvious reasons.”

“So why do you trust them?”

Nelli shrugs, “Secrets. They're all out now that you're in the picture. Jasper isn't the only one who had to leave someone behind, though he is the only one whose circumstances forced him to do so. We all have people we love, Chloe, people from our mortal lives we want to protect. Jasper helped me save my sister, I'm helping him in return.”

“So you would turn me, then?”

“Ha,” Nelli cries out, smiling as she sips at her drink, “You're barking up the wrong tree, darling. You don't want this for yourself, trust me.”

“People keep trying to tell me that.”

“Look, I was in the same position as you, many years ago. I had my eyes opened by someone, and he strung me along until I was begging for it. When he finally Embraced me, I would do anything for his attention, his love, and I did terrible things to get it,” Nelli said, utterly serious compared to the teasing tone she used before.

“Jasper wouldn’t do that to me.”

Nelli leans in, her brightly-coloured lips right next to Chloe’s ear, “But what would you do if he did? You’re putting a lot of eggs in one basket here, darling, and while it’s all very romantic, this isn’t fucking Twilight.”

She, truthfully, has no answer for that, “Did he put you to up to this?”

“Haven’t spoken to him in days,” Nelli says, full of nonchalance as the car slows down to stop at the side of the road, “Now come sit next to Chelsea. We have another joining us tonight, don’t forget to be polite.”

 

iv. annabelle

There is no possible way to describe that night, almost a week ago now, without sounding like a complete lunatic. In her mind, she’s talking to Diane, explaining that one night she was picked up by her fashion professor in an expensive limousine and whisked away to her secret warehouse in the valley to go shopping with an ex-supermodel turned monstress. Imalia was a surprise, to say the least. 

(And throughout the entire night, while she was poked and prodded with needles and forced into magnificent dresses and garments she could never afford, Imalia cursed with envy and hatred, and Nelli watched on in silence. When it was over, she left Chloe back at the park with a bundle of clothes she never asked for, and an equal amount of doubts.)

She had to have been blowing up Jasper’s phone with the number of texts she was sending him, what started as a trickle is now an overflowing dam of commentary. She used to do this to him when they were together. It was something she used to do when they were together. He would feign annoyance as she poked and prodded him until he broke. He always had a wonderful smile, especially when he blushed.

But he still doesn’t answer, and she almost can’t bring herself to care.

The week passes by without a care, and despite the fact that she’s actually living with another person, she still feels helplessly alone, like a boat drifting out to sea with no tether. Nelli’s meddling has left her with a lot to think about, which was probably the goal of their clandestine meeting. She feels no urge to bother Eva with such matters, and in fact, believes that Eva would rather not have her confide in her anyways. So she texts Jasper and wallows in her isolation, balancing on the brink of the all-too-familiar mess she had been only a month or so earlier.

The monotony gets broken the next night, when out of the silent wariness of the woods surrounding the isolated cabin, and knock sounds at the door. 

For a second Chloe is rooted to where she sits in the armchair by the fire, completely taken unaware by the sound. It’s Eva who gets the door, rushing out of her back room with otherworldly grace. When she opens the door, she is nearly tackled by a blur of red leather. Some deeply-buried instinct in Chloe’s blood tells her to get up and fight, but she quells it down.

The girl in the red leather jacket wraps her arms around Eva’s form, and Eva slowly accepts the embrace, obviously a bit unsure of what to do in the situation. After only a second or so, she pushes the other girl away. They’re of the same height, and they turn their backs to Chloe as they whisper to each other. She doesn’t overhear much and pretends to be enraptured with her laptop until they turn to look at her.

“El-?” The girl gasps and Chloe looks up to her from across the room. She looks as if she’s seen a ghost.

“Hello,” Chloe waves, trying to bring an inviting smile to her face, “Baby-B?”

That seems to shake the girl out of her surprise, a distinct grimace and teenage-like eye-roll coming to her face, “Fucking- Victor!” She curses. Eva giggles from behind her before retreating to her lab, “The name’s Annabelle. Victor is just… he’s Victor,” Annabelle sighs as she walks over, her hand outstretched.

“Chloe,” she replies, taking her hand in return, “It’s nice to finally meet you all.”

Annabelle's entire body freezes as her mouth drops open in a combination of surprise and abrupt enlightenment. She's obviously been woefully misinformed of her coterie's actions over the past month, “You're-? Fuck, you’re _her_. You’re the one… he left behind,” Annabelle trails off. The words strike at Chloe’s core, _he left you behind_ , she nods.

Annabelle sighs, sinking into her armchair until she’s slouched against the seat, “This night just got a lot more stressful, I thought he was just worried about-” She cuts herself off, but it’s obvious what she was going to say, her gaze briefly flicking over to the door to Eva’s lab.

“It’s fine,” Chloe says, and it kind of is. She had already concluded that Jasper and Eva’s relationship was probably more than just platonic, though how much more was still in question. The Jasper she remembered was hopeless when it came to any expression of romance, she had to make the first move almost every time until he finally caught up with her. When he finally did, however, well she didn’t really want to think about that.

“You sure about that?” Annabelle asks, obviously sensing her unease about the situation.

She could lie, brush it off like it doesn’t matter to her. She doesn’t, “No. I’m not sure about much these days.”

“Me neither,” Annabelle shrugs, "I don't think any of us are. It's actually the only thing I'm sure about."

“Seems like everything’s pretty fucked.”

“You have no idea, sister,” Annabelle says. Chloe laughs, despite herself, and Annabelle follows suit. It’s awkward, but comfortably so.

“So how long have you known him?” Chloe asks after a moment of silence. She's been looking for information on Jasper's life over the past five years for months now, but everyone else seems to be quite tight-lipped about anything.

Annabelle immediately deflates, “Oh, not long, sorry. I’ve only been like this for like, almost four months? We met not long after I, y'know, and he was… nice-ish?”

That also makes her laugh, “So, Jasper then.”

“You probably know more than I do, honestly, he doesn’t talk about himself much. Talking about you was like pulling teeth, I just knew that you existed and that he might’ve done something to fuck everything up, but he was pretty mute ‘bout that too.”

“He never liked to admit when he was wrong,” Chloe falls back deeper into her chair.

“Have you talked to him at all?”

“Nope. Radio silence from fort Jasper,” she brings out her phone and throws it over. Annabelle doesn’t miss a beat catching. Chloe doesn’t care if she sees anything on there, waiting as Annabelle reads through her wall of texts.

“Idiot,” Annabelle says.

“Tell me about it,” Chloe agrees.

"I'm sorry, if that helps, at all. It probably doesn’t, but still. I can't imagine just being pulled into all of this… well, I guess I can, but I don't know it's different somehow?"

"Thanks, I guess,” Annabelle’s right, it doesn’t make her feel any better, “Though I'm starting to think half of this is my own fault. Five years and I still couldn't let go."

"You're dead boyfriend came out and told you he wasn't dead and instead had been watching you for five years. What you did seems… completely understandable. I thought _Jasper_ would have known better, considering."

"He thought he was helping me move on," Chloe murmurs.

"You can't move on from that. He didn't."

It’s been over a month since she saw him last and she didn’t cry then. She didn’t cry when he ignored her texts, or after her terrible night with Nelli, or after spending so long cooped up with solemnity of Eva. 

She cried when she first found his note, she cried for so long that she forgot what it felt to be happy. But she couldn’t cry after that.

She curls in on herself, embarrassed to let Annabelle see, and tries to remain quiet so Eva doesn’t overhear. Over her sobs, she hears Annabelle pad across the creaky wooden floorboards to kneel down in front of her chair. She takes the laptop off her lap and folds it on the ground.

“I’m sorry,” she sobs.

“No, it’s okay,” Annabelle says, placing a hand on her knee.

No monsters here either.

 

v. jasper

Annabelle spends the rest of the night and sleeps at the cottage for the day before she leaves with a hug for Eva and a promise for Chloe. She pulls through two nights later. The first message from Baby-B is a string of undecipherable emojis, the second is a pair of coordinates, the third is a set of three purple hearts.

She spends enough nights hiking through the forest that Eva lets her go without a fuss. Though she feels bad for lying, she’s pretty sure Eva knows anyway, which makes her feel even worse. There’s no possible good decision she can make that can spare everyone’s emotions, and it kills her to hurt someone that’s been nothing but kind to her. But she’s always been a tad selfish, especially when it came to _him_.

The coordinates lead her to one of the higher points of the park, overlooking the bright lights of Hollywood. She wasn’t given a time to meet, so she decides to wait there, sitting down on the slightly-damp ground. There’s a slight breeze tonight, and she brings her legs up to her chest, placing her chin onto her knees as she looks out into the darkness. Anyone could sneak up on her like this if she were still human, but she isn’t. She wills herself to be able to hear more until she can hear every rustle of a leaf, every honking horn from the city, every flap of a bird’s wing. Twenty minutes later, she hears something attempting to sneak through the underbrush and turns to meet it.

There is a part of her, deep down, that feels like prey. Her heart thumps against her chest, and instinct tells her to run. When he finally appears, it’s out of thin air, and she jumps, her hand going back to steady herself. She needs to take a moment to breathe before she jumps to her feet, and then he’s in her arms for the first time in five years.

Chloe was a respectable 5’10”, but she still felt small when she was next to him. He grunts when she initially makes contact with his body, but only freezes for a second before he collapses around her, his arms going around her back and his forehead bending to press against hers. She gasps at the chill that suddenly surrounds her as he gathers her in his arms. Opening her eyes, she finds him staring directly back at her.

“Hi,” she says breathily, a smile just barely threatening to burst to her lips.

“Hi,” he replies, a stupid barely there smirk on his face.

They collapse together to the ground, him cross-legged and her straddling his lap. There’s nothing sexual about it, she wants to surround herself with him like they used to do years ago. His hands scramble at her back, fingers that could be so gentle yet bruise so easily if she wanted them to dig into her sweater as she buries her face into the crook of his neck. He doesn’t smell like he used to, at least as how she can remember it, in fact, he doesn’t smell like anything.

She presses closer to his chest and he grunts once more, she leans back to look him, “You’re hurt,” she says, concerned.

“No, I’m-”

“Jasper.”

“It’s not that bad.”

“Let me see.”

“Chloe.”

“Jasper.”

He bends under her will. She brings her hands up to his hood, pushing it away from his face. A low growl erupts from his chest, which is new, but it doesn’t perturb her. Like before, when they were first reunited, he can’t look her in the eyes, they shift every which way but towards her. His forehead looks bruised, and she brings her thumb up to brush against the frigid skin. They gasp in unison, him from pain.

“You’re cold.”

“One sec.” 

With a groan and a gasp that shakes through his body, the skin becomes warm under her touch. The pale milkiness of his eyes fade away to reveal bright blue irises, and he actively starts to breathe again, short halting breaths at first that eventually even out. She brings her other hand up to his neck and feels his heart pulsing against her fingers.

“How?”

“It’s a thing. Lasts about an hour.”

She brings her hands down to the buttons at the shoulder of his hoodie, “Can I?”

He nods, and she continues on her way.

The hoodie itself is on its last legs, patched together with different materials that don’t exactly match the rest of the fabric but get the job done. He watches as she goes, as long as she’s not looking at him then he will look at her, breath getting heavier with every button she undoes, though whether that can be attributed to nerves or something else she can’t tell. When she makes it to the last button she doesn't ask before she pushes aside each side of the sweater to reveal his torso.

He was always skinny, so the way his ribs peak out from under the skin of his stomach is no surprise to her. Neither are the veins that continue down his chest like a maze of black scars. No, what surprises her are the bullet holes. Not one, or two, but three of them. One at his shoulder, and two in his abdomen.

She falls back, bringing her hands up to her mouth. The tears that have been slowly welling at the corner of her eyes have finally found their permission to fall.

Jasper's hands go out to circle her wrists, "I'm fine, love."

"No you're not, Jasper, you're not fine."

"They're new wounds, I just need another day to heal them."

"So they're not-?" She starts to ask, but the words catch in her throat.

"No, they're not from that night. Too… conventional."

"Can you tell me what happened? That night?" She still needs to know why he didn't come back, the stories she’s written herself are already numerous and progressively dour.

"No, mostly because I don't remember much of it myself,” he bows his head, but she can still see the bloody tears trailing down his cheeks, “I would’ve come back if I could. I would’ve- I _wanted_ to come back, I wanted-”

“I know, sweetie, I know,” it’s hard to see him like this, so she wraps herself around him, holding him as his body shakes. He leans back bringing her with him until he’s laid out on the dusty ground, her body laid out on top of him. If he’s uncomfortable with her pressing against his injuries he doesn’t let it show.

“We’re a mess,” she says.

“I’m sorry.”

“I know.”

“I would take it back, if I could.”

“No, you wouldn’t.”

He pauses, “No.”

She sighs, turning to get off of him. She lies down next to him, looking away, “What’s going to happen to me, Jasper?”

He curls up behind her, curling his arm around her hip to take her hand in his. His warm breath presses against her neck, and at this moment she can lie to herself and say everything is okay, “I’ve almost squared up my debts with Eva, she’ll keep you safe.”

“But I won’t ever _be_ safe, will I?”

“You will, I promise.”

“I can’t just stay here for the rest of my life, Jasper.”

“You won’t. I just have one more job. Then you’ll be fine.”

“What kind of job?”

“It’s... complicated.”

He doesn’t want to talk about it, then, “Okay, just don’t get hurt.”

He laughs against the skin of her neck, “Okay.”

“Promise?”

“Promise.”

“Okay.”

She tightens her grasp around his hand and closes her eyes, embracing the lie. He lies still behind her, unmoving as his skin turns cold again and his breath against her neck stops.

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this like... two days after the last ep of season 2 aired. I take a long time to post things and this tiny little fandom needs its own tag.


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